Boat Electrical, Refrigerator, Fan everything is breaking

Refrigerator

Having burned all the bristles off my refrigerator maintenance brush last time I tried to clean the flue, I sought in town for one with no luck.  My friend Walter was going to Changuinola yesterday and did me the favor of checking every hardware store and then doing the same in Almirante on the way back.  I wrapped a cloth around the stubs of bristles and scrubbed the flue tube with my three foot brush it seemed to do the trick.    Refrigerator contents hit the ocean or the counter as appropriate.

Battery

After having my battery cable replaced I noticed that my volt meter indicated that I had only 8 volts, barely enough to start the engine.  What the hell?   I took it back to the shop and the mechanic showed me that if I put the battery switch to the "All" position that it rose to 13 volts.  Problem solved.

No, bud, now we are reading the voltage from the second battery, the first battery is still only putting out 8 volts.   He had no idea what I was talking about.  Sitting with the shop owner I told him how to diagnose the system.   Earl's Spanish is atrocious.  I said, "Hey, I brought along a translator, do you want me to get her?"  "Is she cute?"  "Not bad."   I went and fetched her.   Brandy has been sailing for the last week and has darkened quite a bit.  Earl's eyes about bugged out of his head.  Brandy spoke and Earl started telling her that her English was very good.   Yeah, growing up in the States, that can happen, he thought she was Panamanian.  A good candidate for working under cover she could pass herself off as a local in a shitload of countries.   Turned out she never translated anything, Leo, the mechanic apparently understood everything I said.

Measure the voltage across the terminals.   Then from one cable to the other terminal and vice versa.   If you get a voltage drop, the cable being tested at that time needs to be repaired or replaced.   I left, came back in a bit and the guy was sitting, looking at the two batteries with a confused expression on his face.    He felt that I needed to replace the other cable.  I showed him how to measure the resistance through the cable and measure the voltage as explained above.   He did so and I proved there was nothing wrong with either cable.

I told him this had to be continued until he got to the volt meter.  On a subsequent trip I see that he had removed the switch and was stumped again.  I laughed out loud.   When he was replacing the cable I gave him a tube of electrical silicone which is used to wrap splices to make them waterproof.  He had coated the terminals with the substance.  Even with my shitty Spanish I explained to him that this was an insulator, not a conductor and that he had to brush the corrosion off the mount posts and the silicone off the nuts, washers, terminals.

Hell, I did it myself.   He told me the switch was bad and I showed him how to test the switch and proved that it was fine.   Finally it was all put back together and everything was fine.   With a set of tools I could have finished the job in 15 minutes, this took a trip into town and three hours.

With ten trips up and down main street I must have been asked thirty times how Jessica was doing.  I stepped on her foot last night, it was too long a night for me.  Another story, another entry, maybe.

Paint

Richard, the Colombian who painted my boat saw it the day after I got it.  Sheets of paint were coming off the sides.   Richard was appalled and told me that it was no problem, they would fix everything at no cost.   Shit, I don't want to be without a boat for two days.   Turns out they used old paint.  I'm glad it came off so quickly, it was obviously not my fault.  We agreed to have it repainted November 7 through the ninth, when I pop up to San Jose, Costa Rica to pick up my oldest son who needs two implants and two root canals.

Ceiling Fan

The ceiling fan has declined from needing a kick start, to noisy to dead in three days. It's raining, no need for it just now. I'll just add that to my list.